Urban Saints’ overseas mission

A group of Urban Saints from Tullylish and Gilford will fly out to South Africa on July 8 to build new homes for the deprived as part of a ReBuild project.

Formerly called the Crusaders until 2007, Urban Saints is an interdenominational Christian Youth Organisation and the team from Tullylish Church of Ireland, Tullylish Presbyterian and Gilford Church of Ireland have been hard at work organising a Car Boot Sale fundraiser on May 28, for their trip.

Chloe Moffatt, who is travelling with the group said: “We will be joining up with other teams from Ireland and England to build a home for a family living in a township.

“Professional builders will lay the foundations but after that we’ll be building the rest. We’re there for 10 days and at the end we get to hand the keys over to the family.

“While we’re there it attracts a lot of kids from the area, so we’ll also be running kids clubs and we’ll visit an orphanage and an HIV centre.”

The Tullylish and Gilford group of Urban Saints was formed around 20 years ago and 20 young people now meet each Sunday night. Of them, eight will be participating in the South African ReBuild project.

“This is the first time our group has done something like this and for a lot of them it is their first mission trip, so everything is very exciting.

“We’re also the first group from Northern Ireland to do a rebuild project, so they are very excited to have us. As we know each other well, we’ll be able to support each other.”

The Car Boot Sale will take place at Gilford Bowling Green on Saturday, May 28, from 9am - 12 noon and at £5 per car or £10 per van the young people are encouraging everyone to come and support them.